The following story is based on real events. However, nothing about it is intended to imply that any of those events contained therein that are not factually a part of the historical record ever actually occurred. It is fictional in its entirety in that regard.
Softly on the Wings of Dawn
By
Thomas B. Wallace
The Space Shuttle Columbia slipped silently over the ridges of air that marked the line between space and atmosphere at 13:39 GMT of February 1, 2003, 94 miles over and a thousand miles west-south-west of the island of Oahu, Hawaii in the southern Pacific Ocean. Her 7 person crew – no more do we man our vessels but rather do we “crew” them - consisted of 5 men and two women were, as they were used to saying “nominal”. Routinely those with a routine glanced right, left, up and down at their instruments and switches, making brief, necessary comments to mission control in Houston. Shortly they would be enveloped in superheated gas that would ionize the air around them and not allow their radio communications to get through – it was called Entry Interface and it lay just eleven minutes ahead. Best to make necessary comments brief and information packed. If a crew member did not have any instruments or switches to monitor he or she simply engaged their mind in whatever private meditation they devoted themselves to in these most uncertain moments of the journey...
Far below, on the island of Tu'a’ at the Southeastern tip of the American Samoa Island group, a place where today is poised on the cusp of tomorrow, Mosita Carazone stepped out of the small, clapboard hut in which she lived with her mother, father and five siblings, carrying a five-gallon bucket to the village water well. It was 4:00 A.M. (or as close to it as Mosita could tell from the positions of the stars, which were her family’s clock) and Mosita always got up at this time to get morning water for her family.
At twelve she was slightly built, five feet tall with dark, limpid eyes that searched the world for something true and rich and good where there lay mostly poverty and hard work. Rich black, wavy hair framed a pretty oval face already worried about too many things. She wore a thin shift printed with soft purple blooms with slightly green stems that had long been washed into just a breath of visibility. She wore nothing else. No shoes, no underclothing, just the thin dress.
Her mother had promised her that once she became a woman she would buy her underclothes so she could have something for that “time”. Meanwhile, she did her morning chores, which were to retrieve the water, build a small fire in the hearth just outside the shack, set up the maize meal for cooking, either corn cakes, or a mushy porridge, then wake her mother to do the cooking.
Shortly after dawn she and her three brothers and two sisters would make their way down the hillside to the mission school in the valley, while her mother and father left to tend to the pineapple plantation on the valley’s southern side. They did not earn a lot of money, but they earned enough to keep the children in school, to make simple improvements to their shack, as well as to pay the interest, and make small payments on the principle on the small plot of land where their shack stood.
In the afternoon and evenings all came home and spent the time between then and dark working their small garden, in which they grew corn, beans, melons and carrots. It was simple food, for a simple life, yet Mosita often dreamed of something greater. She dreamed of going to the cities on the Hawaiian Islands. Perhaps even one day going to the mainland or Australia. The mission school’s teachers came from these countries and though they spoke her native Samoan and the conversational Spanish used on the island with great skill, she insisted they speak to her in English as she wanted one day to speak with ease in these great countries. Her Island was, nominally a U.S. protectorate, but she and her fellow inhabitants got little benefit from their U.S. citizenship.
As she stepped out of the hut she saw a bright star overhead, moving rapidly to the northeast. It wasn’t quite as bright as Venus and not moving as fast as a shooting star but still it moved quickly and was attracted her attention. On the moment, seeing only a slight glimmer in the east where false dawn was announcing the real thing only an hour or two away, she lifted up a prayer to El Signor and El Nino that this star, moving so quickly to the east would be “her” angel to lead her to the “promised land” of America. She would therefore watch it all the way to its destination, or at least as much of it as she could see. Fortunately it moved in the same direction as she, east, and now turning slightly towards the south, along the muddy track that served as the road to the single shared water well of the village’s 200 people...
Mission Specialist Captain Laurel Clark, M.D. had no specific duties during Entry Interface. She was well rested and excited as the shuttle approached its return to the Cape. This was her first, and a highly successful experimental mission, and she was looking forward to getting back to the base and pursuing the results of her experiments. She might even trade stories about the experience with the other mission specialists, and, perhaps hold forth with a few, maybe slightly exaggerated descriptions of the Space Station for her family and friends. Though she would find it hard to exaggerate the experience, it had been so exciting. Not everyone had the opportunity to see the planet from space, or to live there even if it was just sixteen days.
She was now a member of the most exclusive club on the planet. She was a member of the less than 200 people who had actually “slipped the surely bonds of earth and danced amid the clouds with laughter silvered wings…”, or at least soon would be. She was a little disappointed that they could not see much as they approached Entry Interface.
Initially, when they left the International Space Station they were attitude down, the top of the shuttle towards the earth and they could see it rise and fall in the shuttle’s small windows as they orbited. However, as they approached Entry Interface Willie McCool, the shuttle pilot, rolled the craft into an attitude up position, the bottom of the craft and its primary heat shielding tiles now pointed at the planet below. As they got closer and closer to EI Willie brought the nose up ever so slightly, not enough to cause them to bounce off the atmosphere when they hit it, but still enough so that the earth was no longer visible, only the dark space overhead with its backdrop of twinkling stars slightly rimmed with a dim frost by the edges of the dawning sun they approached at 18,500 miles-per-hour.
“It won’t be long now, Lord,” Laurel breathed silently. She was not an especially religious person, but the awesome majesty of her adventure into the edge of the cosmos had brought home to her the immense wonder of it all. She felt at heart a journey closer to the awesome mind that must have conceived it. And did not any longer feel uncomfortable with the idea of God.
But, there was also a niggling apprehension. This was her first return from mission, just as it had been her first launch and the experience, as awesomely thunderous and trembling as it had been had also scared her and the others. Shortly after launch they had felt a sudden severe jolt, somewhat more severe than the steady thunderous vibration of launch and well before main fuel tank separation, which was supposed to come as a jolt. It hadn’t done anything to put the launch “off-nominal” so they had not tried an emergency and very risky launch abort procedure. Later they learned a piece of what the ground crews thought was the foam covering of the main fuel tank had fallen away and struck their left wing. The mission wasn’t EVA capable so they never were able to examine the wing first hand but some military satellite photos; they had been assured, showed no significant damage.
The ground engineers were the best in the world, knew their stuff and if they said that this had happened before several times and the foam appeared to be too light and flexible to cause any real damage to the carbon-carbon tiles that covered their wings then she trusted them. Still, Laurel couldn’t shake a tiny feeling of apprehension as they approached Entry Interface…
As Mosita approached the water well, still riveted by the rapidly moving star to the east, she set her bucket on the ground and sat down on the concrete bench the missionaries had erected around the well. This they had done so that the well would be a center of contact in the mornings, afternoons and evenings when people came to draw fresh water. They could comfortably sit and talk while they waited their turns at the well. Mosita was almost always alone at this time in the morning, as she was now. She sat none-the-less so she could watch her star travel to the east. In the five minutes or so her walk to the well had taken Mosita had watched her star climb down the eastern sky about one-third the way to the eastern horizon.
As she sat down she thought she saw an instant of increased brightness. Perhaps Senor was trying to signal her, to let her know her star would take her along as long as she watched. Besides, at the rate it was moving, she would only be able to watch it perhaps another ten minutes, maybe less. It was a cool morning, a comfortable breeze blowing down the leeward wall of the Tu’a Mata Mountain eastwards to the sea. Her valley faced the great expanse of Pacific Ocean to the east and from certain spots there was a flat table of sea that reflected the sky, both at night and in the daylight. It was a breathtaking vision and frequently inspired Mosita in her daydreams of travel and adventure. Tonight it looked exactly like her star would dive straight into the ocean beyond her valley. In her minds eye she could see herself riding a silvered trellis as her star fluttered gently to that dreamy land, softly, on the wings of dawn…
At first Laurel didn’t notice the red lights flashing on Willie’s board. She had closed her eyes for a moment to think, and only when there was a slight jolt did she open them. They weren’t really shaking around yet, but she sensed something off-nominal about the atmosphere in the shuttle. She glanced over at Willie McCool’s instrument panel and was greeted with the sight of several amber lights glowing steadily and one or two red lights flashing warnings.
“Off-nominal jet firing on number 2 attitude board,” Willie said, dispassionately. NASA pilots, herself included, were thoroughly trained to respond to emergencies with a methodical, dispassionate set of procedures. Even in the direst of circumstances it was impossible to tell that there was an emergency if one were simply an observer. But Laurel wasn’t simply an observer she was a passenger and a member of the crew. She knew what “off-nominal” meant and she especially knew what it meant at this phase of a shuttle flight.
There was for any shuttle-mission a small re-entry window and angle. Hit the atmosphere too steeply inclined to the earth and the shuttle wouldn’t slow sufficiently to land safely, if it didn’t outright burn up. Hit the window with too shallow an angle and the shuttle would skip off the edge of the atmosphere back into space, possibly setting off into an orbit they would not have the fuel to correct or control. She wasn’t exactly sure what an “off-nominal” attitude jet firing meant, beyond that the computers were trying to make a course or attitude adjustment that shouldn’t be required, but she did know that at mach 24.56 it could not be good.
Willie McCool’s hands flew over his instrument board like a hummingbird fluttering around a gaudy azalea bush. Laurel could see the Analog image of the shuttle and its sensor banks on the left hand side of Willie’s board and there were blinking amber lights now in several places on the left side of the image. She frantically tried to remember precisely what those particular sensors went to and what changes in their color meant.
“Off-nominal temperature rise in left landing gear brake line #2,” Willie supplied for all of them.
“What’s going on Willie?” the question came from Mission Commander Rick Husband?
“I think the engineers may have underestimated our risk,” Willie replied. “I think the attitude jet fired because we have an increased drag on our left wing and the computer is trying to straighten us out. We rolled slightly left and down just before the jet fired. We’re okay for the moment, but it looks like there are some off-nominal temperature rises inside the left wing, nothing that will hurt us just yet, but I don’t like the very idea that it is happening now, even before we are into Entry Interface. If the temperature has already gone off-nominal inside the wing, that close to the landing gear we could be in serious trouble.”
“What does Houston think?” Commander Husband asked?
“I don’t think they’ve noticed yet.” Willie commented, “They’re not usually shy about telling us when something’s wrong.”
While this conversation went on Laurel glanced around at the other four mission specialists. They all seemed riveted on the instrument boards they could see in front of the pilot. Willie’s fingers flew across his instrument switches, the digital displays in front of him and Husband changing views with dizzying speed. Laurel could sense that he was not as sanguine as his calm manner indicated.
“I’m getting some off-nominal low-temp readings off the left elevon hydraulic line sensors,” he said, “those all operate off the same wiring bundle and they wouldn’t go off-nominal low unless there was some kind of wiring degradation.”
“So where does that wiring bundle go,” Rick asked, studying the computer display?
“It comes from up front and runs along the area just behind the inboard leading edge of the wing, then runs aft next to the landing gear well.”
“How long to Entry Interface,” Rick asked, looking at his own digital readout.
“EI at plus 15 seconds,” Willie, and Rick both intoned, eerily chorus like. Laurel knew exactly what that meant. While they had been analyzing the problem the shuttle had slipped quietly passed the point at which they might be able to do something about it by aborting the re-entry, shallow their angle and return to space. Instead they were now committed to re-entry, whatever that meant. At Mach 24.56, visible in the readout just to Willie’s right Laurel knew that they would find that meaning very shortly and she felt a tight knot of fear and regret rise into her throat…
Mosita felt the same tight knot of fear rise into her throat when she saw her star tremble and blink out, then, just as suddenly back on. She concentrated on it now with an intensity that she had not felt before, not so much born of any superstitious regard for what she knew must be an object from space either circling or falling to earth, but rather with a sudden knowledge that she was, somehow, connected to and a part of whatever was happening to this star of hers. She could feel the fear emanating from it now and the fear spread over her like a hot jelly, though she sat rigid and unmoving.
Suddenly she could no longer see it at all, rather she found herself in front a dizzying array of lights, switches, blinking signals and alarms, surrounded by them, listening to strange clipped voices not so much shouting as projecting into the air around her. She was, like them, those who spoke, encased in a rigid orange suit with a round orange helmet whose face was transparent and clear. She was terrified and knew, with utter certainty, she was going to die. Then she realized that she was not alone and that it was not her that was going to die, but the woman with whom she now found herself sharing a being. It was her terror she felt, her certainty of death and, now a very profound sadness, sadness that she would never be allowed to finish it all. The family, the career, the motherhood, the old age she had always pictured with the handsome, tall man she loved but did not recognize. It was perhaps the strangest sensation she had ever experienced. She was at once herself, but inside the body and feelings of another. And there were things she knew that she should not know.
She knew, for instance that “her star” was not a star at all, but the Space Shuttle Columbia, returning to Cape Canaveral after its latest mission. She knew that she was Laurel Clark, STS-107 Mission Specialist and that she was scared because the shuttle was in trouble and it was going way to fast to survive being in trouble. She knew that the pilot, Willie, and the Commander, Rick were doing their very best to put it all back together again, but she also knew that it was useless. She was sad, and afraid and angry and she didn’t want to die because she had a little boy to raise, and a husband who would not understand why she had left so early. She regretted also that she would never be able to tell him how important this career had been and she was sorry that it was going to end so soon. Finally, she was afraid because she had no real idea what would happen next.
“Don’t be afraid, Senora,” Mosita thought. “I am here to guide you.”
“Who are you,” the thought was startled and confused. Clearly, until just now, Laurel had not been aware of her.
“I am your guide,” Mosita answered, not using her name because it was far more important the woman understand why she was there than it was that she know who Mosita was.
“Guide to what,” Laurel thought. “I must be losing it. I am going to die and my brain is sending me a guide to the experience.” It was her rational mind trying to comprehend Mosita’s presence and Mosita knew that nothing she could say, or do would change what the woman thought about reality. But why, if she could not show the woman the way, did El Signor and El Nino send her here, to be with her?
“God, I wish I knew how to pray,” Laurel thought desperately. “Instead up against the end and all I can do is invent ghost messengers.”
“I will teach you to pray, Senora,” Mosita thought. “That is how I will guide you.”
“What about the other’s?” Laurel asked. “Who will guide them?”
“Do you pray them to have guides?” Mosita asked?
“Of course I do,” Laurel replied. “They are my friends. They are my colleagues.”
“Then they shall have guides also, but not me. I am yours,” Mosita did not know how she knew, only that she knew it and needed to make the woman understand.
“So how are you going to teach me to pray?” Laurel asked.
“First you must understand that I am not a ghost. I am real, just as you are, and we are connected. Let me show you…”
Laurel Clark was suddenly aware of the walls of the shuttle dissolving around her, replaced by a clearing with a water pump in the middle of a concrete apron surrounded by concrete benches all around except at two corners, where people could walk in unobstructed. She was seated on one of those benches, gazing raptly at the night sky to the east and a bright star that climbed quickly down the darkness towards dawn. She realized, just from the speed and position that the star had to be the shuttle, and, from the position they had been in when she left she must be somewhere west and south of the Hawaiian Islands. She also knew that she was Mosita Corozone, a 12 year old Tu’a Island girl with 6 brothers and sisters and that, somehow she and this little girl were connected, brought together in a moment of stress that crossed the dimensional barriers of time, distance and thought and made them one in two places, two in one place. She did not know how she could know all of this, since it all flew in the face of the physics and knowledge to which she had devoted her life, but her recent experience in space had taught her that there were wonderful and incomprehensible vistas beyond the range of everyday sight and now she chalked her new found metaphysical understanding up to that new openness of mind. Perhaps it was conceivable that her brief prayer had been answered and she was to have a guide.
“It’s funny, once you accept the fact of death, then it seems just possible to believe anything, doesn’t it,” Laurel wondered to herself.
“No, Senora” Mosita offered. “Once you accept the fact of life, then it seems just possible to believe anything, and it becomes so terribly difficult to believe we must give it up.”
“But why am I not afraid now?” Laurel asked.
“Because you have just understood that your life lies so far beyond your own small years that you know now the adventure has just begun,” Mosita replied. Again she did not know how she knew such profound things, things only holy men should know, but she felt altogether confident that what she had thought was as true as the sun, the moon and the stars.
Laurel sat watching the star of the shuttle descending in the east and felt a languid peace come over her as she did.
“We must return Senora,” Mosita observed. “Your time and your tasks are not yet done.”
“What can I do?” Laurel asked.
“You have found a guide,” Mosita replied. “Your friends, several of them are trapped inside their own sense of limitation and helplessness. You can pray that they too are sent guides.”
“But I don’t really know how to pray,” Laurel opined.
“Then I will teach you Senora…”
Laurel opened her eyes and found herself once again surrounded by the urgency of a lame and dying shuttle on the edge of the abyss. Willie’s and Rick’s fingers flew across gauges, lights, alarms and keyboards like a quatrain of moths whose only conception was that the beating of their futile wings could damp those orange and red flames that drew them so irrevocably.
“Houston, we have off-nominal temperature rises in the left inboard landing gear hydraulic brake lines,” Willie was saying, apparently now in contact with Houston. “We have off-nominal jet firing on R2R and R3R. Okay, now we have a negative inertial sideslip angle. It’s not extreme but I think we are rolling left and down. The computers are trying to compensate…”
While Willie and Rick fought the losing battle for control of the increasingly out of control craft Laurel looked around at her fellow astronauts. Over the months and years of training she had grown to know all of them, and even became close with several. It was not usual for the highly scientific backgrounds of these people to yield much in the way of religious thought but she knew that they were not all completely agnostic or atheist. They each had a practice of faith if not a sense of it, having, as they had put their faith in the instruments of their own devising, it would not be a huge leap to begin to put it in the instruments of another’s. Kalpana Chawla, whom Laurel knew was Hindu, though not particularly devout, sat calmly, hands clasped in her lap, eyes closed, lips moving silently. She had reached back into her own past and was chanting a mantra. The three men just looked resigned, ready to deal with whatever came. How was she to know who needed her prayers Laurel wondered?
“El Senor knows,” Mosita offered.
“Then why do they need my prayer?” Laurel asked.
“So that you will know that He knows they need your prayer. That you are willing to rely not on your own understanding, but on His. That He will give them the understanding they need to find their own guides,” Mosita once again surprised herself with the understanding she seemed to have. Laurel wasn’t sure that she understood completely what the little girl had said, but at this point it didn’t really matter whether she understood it all. What mattered was that whatever she understood was bringing her into a mental and spiritual peace she had never experienced before. Perhaps it was the proximity and inevitability of death that did it, and perhaps it was a new understanding of how completely connected she was to this little girl whose body was three thousand miles away, and what that showed about the connections that all life brings to reality. Either way she felt a calm descend across her soul and mind like an angry and violent ocean suddenly cleared of every cloud and every breeze.
Without knowing why she did it she reached out and grasped the hand of each of her colleagues to her right and to her left. She turned her head sidewise to each and nodded slightly to indicate that they should do likewise to those next to them. The two on the ends reached forward and lightly placed their outboard hands on the outboard shoulders of Rick and Willie. Those two, if they felt the hands on their shoulders gave no indication, but kept at the task of at least trying to rescue the wounded craft. But it was becoming apparent to them also that it as a futile effort. The boards in front and around them were lit up like Christmas trees with red and amber lights and it was clear that the sensor readings were getting worse with each passing second.
The craft had begun to shudder and shake and throughout the craft a humming, keening vibration was transmitted into the suits of all the astronauts.
“Pray as I tell you Senora,” Mosita Instructed. “Great maker of all creation, Father of us all, your name is beyond our comprehension in glory and is special to us all. We lift our voices to you now to say that we accept that your will is what is to be done, both here on earth and in all the creation under heaven. We ask you to give to us each thing that we need to live from moment to moment into all eternity with you. We ask that you would forgive us where and when we have offended you, and we ask that you forgive those now who have offended us. In this moment of our trial at the door of our own death do not let us be lead away from the good and towards the evil, but rather deliver us from that evil that besets us now. We pray this because we all know that whatever our conceits your creation is forever, your glory is forever and your authority is forever… Thank you that El Nino was sent to teach us this… Amen…”
“Columbia, Houston, we have your temperature anomalies in the left landing gear well,” Laurel heard in her head phones.
“Uh, yes,” Rick replied, and the keening vibration that had been building over the last several minutes crested suddenly and Laurel saw the walls of the shuttle disintegrate, not like she had before when she had gone in spirit with Mosita to her Island, but literally come apart in front of her eyes and she felt herself spun away and up into darkness, the g-forces tearing at her. There was an instant flash of brilliant pain, then nothing but darkness through which she floated without any sense of motion for a period she could not define. In the distance a single speck of dim light began to grow in her vision until it became a great dark tunnel around her leading to the light. Floating towards the light she realized she was being carried forward by a little girl who brought her to the feet of a man who stood in the center of the light with outstretched arms and Mosita, the little Tu’a Island girl who dreamed big, adventurous dreams, laid her at the feet of El Nino softly, on the wings of dawn…
